The television viewing experience has changed relatively little over the past fifty years. Today, television is still enjoyed through a passive viewing experience that is essentially non-functional beyond the one-way communication of audio/video. TV stimulates demand, but is unable to recognize or fulfill it. Conversely, the Internet can provide functionality to recognize and fulfill demand but does effectively little to stimulate it. The challenge lies in empowering the TV with the functionality to recognize and fulfill the demand that it stimulates, while not disrupting the simplicity, clarity, and excitement that makes the TV experience so popular.
Video game developers have already demonstrated the merits of infusing video with interactivity. This successful infusion proves that when the viewer interacts with video, and the video responds accordingly; the resulting effect is one that engages and immerses the audience to a much higher degree, yielding a dramatic improvement to the overall quality of the experience. Video games are engaging, simple and interactive—but are not functional or versatile outside their intended gaming purpose.
In recent years, businesses and educational institutions have learned the Internet (as accessed by the World Wide Web) has considerable limitations. With more than 600 billion web pages and 7.5 petabytes of information accessible, Internet users are well aware of the intense effort required to translate information into understanding. It is widely acknowledged that with a seemingly endless array of valuable services available, the overall customer desire to get “what you want, when you want it” on the Internet has been less than fulfilled. Undesirable experiences have offset the versatility and functionality of the web in the minds of many users. As evidenced by failing dot-coms, the initial excitement of the web has faded, and many users are bypassing otherwise valuable Internet-based services due to complex, confusing, and boring experiences. Online service providers must provide better experiences or watch customers leave.
Many benefits arise from enabling viewers to go beyond a passive viewing experience. The viewing experience is enhanced when viewers can react and respond to the impulses and inspirations triggered by the viewing experience. The ultimate solution leverages the characteristic strengths of the TV experience (simple, understandable, engaging) to negate the characteristic weaknesses of the typical web experience (complex, confusing, boring) and simultaneously delivering versatile, interactive functionality enabling people to do the things they want to do.
Recognizing the video-centric nature of TV as the driving force behind its success in delivering entertaining and understandable experiences, technology vendors are developing solutions to harness this power and apply it to create functional, interactive and versatile Internet-based applications that are simple, understandable and engaging. These solutions can be primarily placed into one of two categories: Interactive TV or Streaming Media.
Responding to the fact the penetration of TV is approximately twice that of Internet connectivity, numerous vendors have sought to empower TV viewers to interact with web pages on the TV through a set-top box. This approach makes it easier for a viewer to act on impulse inspired by video, and does enable the TV to become functional. Interactive TV solutions work by attaching a set-top box to a TV. Essentially this technology brings the functionality, versatility, and interactivity of an Internet-enabled PC to the TV, in some ways making the TV more “PC-like”. This approach is useful for providing simple web services such as electronic program guides, video-on-demand, targeted advertising, and simple e-commerce.
For applications that are more complex, however, this approach has several disadvantages. First, the content and applications are platform specific and may be run only on certain platforms. Porting functionality and content to run on a PC or cell phone takes considerable effort. Second, the infrastructure provided by these interactive TV product vendors has been tuned and tweaked to succeed in delivering a limited number of high-demand applications. The infrastructure lacks the flexibility to provide a deployment platform for a wider range of applications that can access valuable Web Services. Third, while this approach brings functionality, versatility, and interactivity to the TV, a closer look at this approach reveals additional disadvantages. This experience works by shifting the viewer's attention from the understandable, engaging messages conveyed via the video to a web page reformatted for TV. Although this approach provides easier access to some of the same basic Internet functions, it solves none of the inherent problems noted above.
Streaming media vendors have evolved from providing streaming media solution components to providing integrated application platforms. These integrated application platforms can conduct commerce transactions, syndicate content, and provide advertising support integrating content delivery with personalization (profiles, tracking & reporting). Most commonly, though, these solutions are used to stream audio and video to a PC. In this capacity, this technology essentially brings the simple, understandable, and engaging messages of TV to the PC, in some ways making the PC more “TV-like.”
The advantage of Streaming Media platforms is that it provides the components for building interactive, functional applications that are simple to use, understandable, and engaging via personalized interactive video. By using advanced compression algorithms, such as MPEG-4, these platforms are portable to many different platforms, including TV set-tops, cell phones, PDAs as well as PCs. The disadvantage of Streaming Media platforms is that the personalization and commerce provided is proprietary and unable to leverage investments and or data contained in existing profiling or customer relationship management systems. Furthermore, utilizing these platforms to access other Web Services requires additional development. Thus, the desired versatility and flexibility comes with considerable cost.
It is therefore desirable to provide web services, interactive media, and other information in a rich client front-end that is engaging and interactive for the user. It is also desirable to provide an interactive experience that can anticipate the user's needs based upon a user's preferences and make suggestions that would assist him/her in their on-line experience. It is further desirable for a system to custom-tailor an interactive presentation to a specific user's needs and present certain options that a user has expressed interest in. It would be further desirable for a system to be constructed using an open-source platform so that it may be exported to a wide variety of client platforms.